Banish one beast and another appears on the island;
This one though, is beastly, a murk-mired Miranda
As opposed to Johnson’s monstrous Caliban,
Begat by Ken Branagh in This England this week,
While endlessly quoting Shakespeare, a noble savage
Battling beneath Covid’s span. But who or what
Does Truss quote? Who is her favourite poet?
Edward Lear, maybe, King of all nonsense verse?
It wouldn’t be Bob Cobbing’s sound-spells,
As there was substance behind that lost language;
So hers is doggerel cocking its leg on all lamp-posts
Shining on already mired streets, which smell worse.
Within a month she has stanza’d ineptness. Even
The party that shifted from Sunak to her, is aghast.
The blatancy stuns as the poor fall numbed at the horror
Of the privileged passing new blooms of potential
Despite our economic bomb-blast. Do you really
Have so much spit in your eye that you cannot see
What’s before you? I talk of her and the voters,
Who sought to allow her ascent. How removed
Can you be? How un-versed, and un-cultured,
That you cannot care for what happens across
Chaos and country when even Michael Gove
Cries dissent? Have we fallen so far from apparent
Reason that there is no discernment, on who
Supersedes, leading and who observes that exchange?
Memory makes us prisoners of the past but in that
Past there was freedom. Or else its illusion. Today,
Its the present that keeps each fresh new field
Beyond range. Amateur Dramatics is seen as some
Form of hobby. But in that practise I have met so many
People of worth. This poor show fails to shine on each
Stage it tours to. The warp in Westminster reveals
How her fat failure exceeds Johnson’s girth. After the idiocy
Of Priti Patel the village finds a new fool to challenge
Lear and his namesake. Unlike Lot’s wife, she looks
Forwards and sees only Tinkerbell’s magic dust.
She is Robina Hood in reverse. But insulting her
Achieves little. There is nothing left now to teach her,
So, can we but say: fuck you, Truss? We’d be children,
Too, if we did. Amateurs without mission. In Am-Dram,
Love fuels them. But for this one-woman absence
There is nothing I know which applies. She is stumbling
Around the political stage, lost for cues. Her lines leak
And pale as she says them. Unlike all great actors
Pretence can’t protect her. Reality for her, holds no
Interest. She struts and gluts, the poor player.
She is script as scream. Each page lies.
David Erdos 4/10/22
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